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Whatever Happened to 3G Dept.: It was recently reported that Motorola is staffing a wireless research center to develop fourth-generation (4G) cell-phone systems. Whatever happened to the 3G phones? You remember them. They were supposed to deliver high-speed data and we could all hook our computers to them to get on the Net. Oh, and remember all those predictions that by now most of our Internet activity would be done on the phones? Now we have 4G. I'm personally going to wait until 5G before I make my move.

Electronic Books Dept.: I've been meaning to write about the OpenReader initiative that began some time back as a way to get away from all these proprietary formats for electronic books or

e-books. If anyone has wondered why electronic books have done so poorly, one of the main problems is with the software used to encode the text and make it read properly on the various devices that have come and gone. It's all incompatible.

I myself have read very few long texts on a book reader or even on the computer, but there are enough people who enjoy reading electronic texts to make a market for them. But that market is not about to support a half dozen different companies selling little electronic book readers, each with its own encoding system. The result has been moribund sales. The OpenReader project will be delivering software in a few months. Follow their progress at www.openreader.org. It may make a difference.

Genuinely Interesting Software Dept.: I recently discovered a fascinating spidering program called WebCopier Pro from MaximumSoft ( www.maximumsoft.com ). It works better than any spidering program that I've ever used. One noteworthy advantage is that the defaults seem to be perfect.

If you are unfamiliar with these programs, they are used to copy a complete Web site from the Internet to your hard drive or thumb drive or whatever. This is handy if you want to browse, for example, a large museum site on your laptop while traveling in an airplane. You spider the site and put it on the laptop. You'll actually be surprised by how often you'll use this program. When it cranks up, it typically opens five download channels and just grabs everything while transposing URLs so that it will work on the hard drive with links intact. It's very handy, and it's highly recommended. The best version is WebCopier Pro, which sells for $50, including a lifetime of free upgrades.

Pump Up the Power Dept.: If you're looking for an unusual wireless gateway router, check out the Bountiful Router from Bountiful WiFi out of Woods Cross, Utah ( www.bountifulwifi.com ). I was most amused by the company press release, which goes on and on about this $600 device without ever mentioning its most interesting feature. Instead of the milliwatt radio found in most 802.11 gateway routers, this sucker has a full 1-watt radio. This is the legal limit allowed by the FCC for any radio running 802.11. And apparently there are all sorts of other requirements on top of this. As far as I can tell, it took a lot of work just to get this torch approved by the government. This has got to be a fun device for 802.11 hobbyists who want to experiment with antennas and long-distance 802.11.

John Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the host of the weekly TV video podcast CrankyGeeks. His work is licensed around the world. Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, Barrons, MacUser, PC/Computing, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon...
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